Tens of thousands crowded into the nation’s front yard on Monday to celebrate a peaceful — if broiling — Memorial Day.

After a torrential downpour Sunday, temperatures reached the high 80s Monday for the Memorial Day parade, which kicked off from Constitution Avenue across from the National Archives at about 2 p.m.

Friends William Grayson, 16, Javier Roman, 13, and Kristin Thiesfeld, 16, ROTC Marines from Quantico, held a banner saying “National Memorial Day.”

“It’s awesome,” William said. “There’s nothing more exciting than to look down this road and see everything ahead.”

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Kai Schowe, 3, was excited, too. Standing by his brother, Chase, 2, and his mother, Roxanne, of Baltimore, Kai said he couldn’t wait for the parade to begin.

“I want to see them play music and march around,” he said.

But the day belonged to the veterans.

The day’s biggest cheer went up when a golf cart passed the reviewing stand. The announcer told the crowd that the cart carried Frank Buckles, a veteran of World War I.

Sitting on a float was Bill Broadwater, 81, a former Tuskegee Airman.

The Airmen were pioneering African-Americans, the first blacks to fly combat missions for the U.S.

“We want to show them that we’re still around and doing things that people thought we couldn’t do,” Broadwater said. “We showed them we could fly airplanes. And we were pretty darn good at it.”

The flag at the National Archives, where the parade began, was lowered to half-staff. At 3 p.m., the parade halted and the music stopped.

All observed a moment of silence for the fallen. The silence was broken only by the peal of two Air Force jets doing a flyover.

The weekend saw thousands take to the capital region’s roads, but the day passed relatively safely.

Maryland and Virginia State Police reported a calm weekend on the capital region’s roads, while there were “a rash” of fatalities in the areas around Salem County, Va., and a fatality on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, police said. As of press time Monday, the District too was quiet.

Early traffic reports on Monday afternoon suggested that parade-goers would have a long ride home: There were already reports of minor accidents and congestion on the main thoroughfares out of the District.